Hi,

I've just seen a headline on Sky News that says that the home office has banned deactivated firearms. What does that do for the off ticket rule for ole "wallhangers" etc? It may also affect out of proof guns and their ownership, which is currently a grey area anyway in the law.

I'm not sure if this is a proposal or an actual ban, but I'll look on the net and see what I can come up with.

Rgds,
FB

I just saw an interview with the home secretary, and apparently the ban is a proposal at the moment.

Any time a ban is mentioned I'm sure the intricacies of the legitimate guntrade are at best infrniged upon.

Rgds,

FB

FB

I am just watching Sky News at the moment.

It shows some footage of a guy at Minsterley ranges loading up an Uzi. He then proceeds to sweep the camera man as he is making ready and puts his muffs on whilst (seemingly) placing the loaded Uzi between his legs.

He then proceds to bring upto target.

Not sure who he is but its absolutely disgraceful.

It looks like the usual case of someone who doesn't know what they're talking about proposing worthless legislation and being reported on by someone else who doesn't know what they're talking about:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7180712.stm

Regards,

Tim

quote:

Originally posted by Tim1:
It looks like the usual case of someone who doesn't know what they're talking about proposing worthless legislation and being reported on by someone else who doesn't know what they're talking about:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7180712.stm

Tim,

You might be a little off the mark..

Apparently there is a known and growing problem with de-acs being "reactivated" into working firearms with in criminal circles.

In the UK, the law concerning how a weapon was deactivated was changed and tighten up considerably some years back to make this "re-activation" far more difficult from an engineering perspective.

The problem supposedly arises from de-acs predating this change in the law, or de acs legally imported from EU States who's own de-ac laws are not as stringent as ours.

I seem to recall a father and son being jailed a couple of years back for re-activating such weapons and selling them to the criminal underground...IIRC the numbers they talked about were in the thousands over a period of several years..These included "live" conversions of the .22 air cartridge pistols which were available then.

If any change in the UK is required, hopefully it will be done after consultation with shooting organisations and the gun trade so that any forth coming legislation, is effective, and targets the problem properly, not just a knee jerk reaction as per the pistol ban...

Regards,

Pete

Why do deactivated firearms exist in Britain at all? Why is it that a real gun, working or not has been allowed to be owned without a licence? Before 1988 any gun, working or not, whether it could or could not chamber a bullet had to be licensed. What changed?



The finger must point clearly at Douglas Hurd and his post-Hungerford 1988 Firearms Act for those who remember it all:



De-activation first became widespread after the 1988 Firearms Act that followed the murder of sixteen at Hungerford. Before that a gun, working or not, it was always usually treated in law as if it was a working gun. That it had parts missing, or removed, or the striker hole welded shut didn't matter. It was, regardless, a gun. No licence? Go to jail! In its simplistic terms.



There were the long forgotten London and Birmingham Proof House so-called "Certificate of Inability to Fire". That probably applied to less than a few score guns each year but essentially there was no widespread legitimate ownership pool or trade in "deactivated" firearms". Such a thing did not exist. Basically the law before 1988 held that once a gun always a gun and that it would always require a licence. It was in the eyes of the law a gun, no matter whether it chambered a bullet or not, no matter what "welding" or "milling" or "plugging" had been done to it.

A Conservative Government seeking to avoid financial liability for the consequences of its actions after Hungerford in banning certain self loading weapons introduced the option of "de-activation". This so that monies would not be paid out for self-loading rifles and self-loading UZIs. But the result of this was to then create not a category of "the deactivated gun" far wider than the original constituency it was meant to appease, that of the licensed UZI or SLR owner.



The cat was out of the bag. A whole new class of the real gun that wasn't a gun because it had been "welded" or "milled" or "plugged" was created. No licence was needed to possess and no control was placed on who could posses them. A criminal could walk out of prison and buy one with no restriction or penalty the same afternoon. Quite legally!

The nett result? A huge industry importing full s5 - or fully automatic sub-machine guns - merely for the purposes of de-cativation and sale. And, of course, as a "knock-on" deactivated pistols and revolvers. Previously although there had been a trade in these things it was always for export from the UK elsewhere still as s5 weapons or as s1 weapons. That wasn't the intention of the 1988 Act. The intention was to reduce the number of compensation cheques that the Home Secretary had to sign. But that was not the actual nett result.

So we then had a UK "awash" with de-activated weapons. This then resulted in the easy route, for criminals, of buying the de-acts (thus avoiding themselves smuggling them in) at a very chaep cost and using an "armourer" to re-activate them. So the things were being imported legitimately into the UK, being deacticated legitimately, and sold legitimately. All enabled by the legislation following Hungerford and all, as it had passed the law to allow it, with Government approval.

The criminal now no longer had to take the risk of importing a working gun. He simply quite lawfully bought a deactivated one and took it to his friends in the motor trade, or metalwork trade, who were in many individual cases, a veritable Michael Angelo a Leonardo da Vinci with the welding torch, reamer and milling machine! A "frankenstein gun", stitched and stuck together from a thing that once was entire like the monster created Mary Shelley's nightmare.

Such as people who did this work in Sussex like Tony Mitchell. Also, of course, the rather harshly treated Greenwoods who although they never actual never re-activated a single weapon sold quite legally the blank rifled tube, chamber reamer - legal, and verbal "how to". All in themselves legitimate but in the round the means, material and knowledge to make these guns work again.

Many guns that had passed via the Greenwoods - as noted above they would sell you the pistols, the rifled tube and the reamers all in one "buy" - were used in crime and a number of murders. Tony Mitchell was a specilaist in reactivating compact UZI and Mac 10 style sub-machine gun.

Thus a whole legitimacy and as a "knock on" whole illegal industry and market created by a Conservative Government for these things.

As a former firearms dealer, I know that it would never be an impossible problem to make or re-make the major components. Then, and now, these parts are quite legitimately made to restore antique revolvers and pistols. There is little difference between that and the criminal making of such parts for modern revolvers and pistols. If the reward for the effort is right. A cylinder, a barrel, a frame, a slide. What metal has been removed can always be replaced. What has been plugged can always be bored out, etc., etc.

No, the real difficulty would be in making the "small parts", the uncontrolled parts. The trigger, the pawl, the ejector, the barrel collet, the ejector rod, the pressed steel magazine, the revolver extractor star, etc., etc. All that came unmodified, undeactivated, with the deactivated "chassis".

What de-cativation did was deliver to the criminal underworld all the "fiddly bits" on a "chassis" that was easily restored to function in comparison to the risk of sourcing and importing an equivalent number or identical working guns abroad.

It is now for the media to realise that this whole category of deactvated guns only exist as a result of the weapons prohibitions introduced in 1988! And the disgraceful attempt of a Government to seek to avoid liability for fair compensation to those affected. Sixteen died at Hungerford. Far more, may times over, have died since as a direct result of that legislation and the deactivated weapon category it legitimised.

It is time for Douglas Hurd, Home Secretary at that time, to be now called to account. Sixteen died at the hands of Michael Ryan at Hungerford. Score upon score have since been murdered by these "frankenstein guns" legitimised by the Conservative Government's 1988 Firearms Act.

Enfield,

An interesting read and probably a lot of fact there, but remember. The world over, criminals use firearms to kill eachother and the innnocent. They happened to exploit a loophole in the law. A loophole similar to that which Mick Shepherd was arrested because of, (And subsequently released).

My point is that in other countries where the deactivation isn't a problem, they find other methods to get the guns and shoot people with. And still they will continue to do so if such a ban is brought in. That is not to say that I'm against relegislating for this occurence, just that I don't think you can blame the legislation for the death of all those people.

I still go allong with the adage that "Guns don't kill people, people kill people." We proved that after the ban on handguns and any number of subsequent reports on the subject.

Rgds,
FB

I think this is such a tricky one for us because we are generally law abiding people who are keen not to see firearms abused and so we tend to support any regulation which limits abuse. On the other hand we are also in a position where we are under attack from a wide range of powerful lobby groups, who I might generally refer to as the green lobby, who demand concession after concession and who have nothing to give or lose. It is only a matter of time before they are making demands upon even the most law abiding of us and for this reason we are reluctant to give an inch because we know it is just the first step in being asked to give a mile.

To be honest I'm not sure how we balance this out. I personally can't see why I'd want a de-activated firearm but on the other hand I understand that some people have an interest in such things and that an attack by the green lobby upon their interests is just a precursor to an attack upon my interests.

It is also important to point out that despite significant efforts by large numbers of representitives of the security services, army and police the IRA, generally working in a tiny geographical area, managed to maintain access to huge numbers of firearms and to import them as required. If criminals want firearms they will get them and this ease of access will always be used as a big stick to beat us law abiding citizens with. I guess this echos what FB is also saying.

We also have a situation where some of the guilt for the criminal behaviour of others is somehow dumped on us and I think we tend to feel this guilt. However, just because we are law abiding and have no interest in such things we would be the last people to know what the criminal element are up to with their firearms. Criminals will general avoid those who the police consider responsible upstanding citizens with clean records, clean pasts and a stable and conventional life. So, although those of us with an interest in sporting guns are sucked into this "debate" by the actions of the green lobby there are actually few people in society who are further away from it in reality. However, the green lobby have sucked us in because they wish to criminalize us, as they did with those who hunt, and so they have made this reflect on us. The media in turn are only too keen to associate us with this criminality in search of sensationalism and we find that one of the most law abiding groups in society is criminalized through the efforts of a few green nutters who want us all living in mud huts and eating lentils.

Based on this analysis of our situation I think it is important that we engage in political lobbying at the very highest level, the greens are doing it and if we fail to do it then the public and the politicians will only ever get one side of the story.

HHHMMMM,
maybe my English is not good enough or not good as I think or hope, and for this reason maybe I did not understand the real problem, but there is a fact that I know from a lot of time and it is that criminals do not need any permission or licence to have and use any kind of gun.

Any discussion or debate around the efficency of a ban has no sense because only the honest people respect the ban, not the criminals.

The real fact is that for the people at the govern is more easy to blow smoke in the normal people's eyes managing more restrictive bans that hit the same normal people freedom than seriously and honestly declare that they are not able to stop illegal guns commerce or illegal modifications on deactivated guns or to manage any other act that they took after a sensational fact where guns were used.

It happens also in Italy where there is a good law on guns.

And it happened not only with the left govern that we have since a year and a half, but also with the previous conservative govern.

If a sensational bloody fact with guns abuse happens (legal guns or not), many try to ride the tiger screaming that guns must be eliminated, some other ask more frequent check up for the gun owners. Take in consideration that this means about 150/200 euro each time.


And, more or less, none take in consideration that a raptus is something of absolutely unpredictable.

The sad thing is that some of these sensational bloody facts were easily avoidable if the police people evaluted some report made by the most close relatives (that are often the victims) of the people that managed the criminal act in a moment of raptus.

No one take in consideration that a hammer, a knife or a stick as a stone or any other thing [a BIC pen is deadly if (not) properly used] can become a weapon lethal as a firearm.

And if I have been off the topic, pleas excuse me, I will practice more English language.

At the moment, theres a big fear by all of the politicans, the european citizens will do a armed revolution agains the now ruling government.
In germany, we get a new gun law in spring ´08. With very many new and special bullsh*t, escaped from the brains of our paranoic politicans.
For example, one of the new law say, every gun, old or new, must have all the signs, Number, calibre, the gunmaker and the country at the gun parts. This have the result, that all the old and collctibe guns must be signed. So all the old guns now,aren´t origin and will lose in price.
I will see in the future, all gun´s are baned and the next step will be, all books about guns and ammunition, will be forbidden. Like the Nazis in the ´30, all "bad" books must burn!

I will say, the German government, especial the minister of the interior, can not place behind every citizen a policeman. This will be impossible, but only a disarmed and submissive citizen, is a good citizen.


Martin

God Bless our founding fathers and the Second Ammendment to the U.S. Constitution!

I'm not saying that the anti-gun forces won't eventually win in this country, but a least the Second Ammendment has slowed them down.

That said, take a lesson from the National Rifle Association: FIGHT! Fight every abridgment to your gun ownership rights no matter how small. Remember, these groups will not be happy until every firearm is out of private hands in every country in the world. Any ground given up willingly just moves them one step closer to their ultimate goal.

Now, we get it. The German government concluded the new gun law. Main parts, are the ban of all rifles and toys look-alike assault rifles and the ban to take a one hand folder and a fixed blade, when the blade is longer than 12cm, outside your home. Allthough all automatic knifes are ban in the public. The other are things like the transport of guns from home to shooting range and to hunting. With special cases, etc.
When you want to hunt in other countries outside europe and take you own rifle to the trip, you need special papers.
And many, samll parts more. Now, Germany is safer!


Martin